Standing in the Intersection
by themagpie17
Summary: After the Doctor leaves Rose and his half-human metacrisis in their alternate universe, they set to work on growing a new TARDIS. On its maiden voyage, Ten!Too realizes too late: there were no Time Lords, TARDISes or Huon energy in the alternate universe.
1. In the Presence of the World at Hand

_"And all the storms that we had been  
They're paled and past  
In the presence of the world at hand"_

_Thursday: A Darker Forest_

The Doctor's head aches. He is slammed against the console of the new TARDIS, thrashed about as she jerks back and forth in the Time Vortex. This is their first trip together, since she reached adolescence. It took three years for her to grow enough to travel in the console he had built, and even that was only thanks to the accelerator he developed from the Torchwood archives.

Rose is clinging to one of the beams of the console room, arms and legs wrapped around it desperately. The Doctor is swearing inwardly - this would be a lot less troublesome if he were not half-human. His sense of temporal continuity is all but blind, and his extemporaneous compass is approximately half as accurate as it had once been (and it had never been very accurate). Gritting his teeth, he grabs hold of the emergency decelerator to force a landing in whatever decade is safest.

"Don't worry - I'll just force an emergency landing and see what has her so upset - she could just be a bit travel sick - it is her first time after all -" and the decelerator breaks off in his hand. Rose shoots him a desperate look just before she hits the TARDIS floor, having lost her grip on the support beam. His determination is renewed until suddenly the console room is washed in crimson light from the console, freezing the Doctor's heart and body. The ship stops its violent tremors and the stink of struck matches fills the air.

Rose picks herself up from the floor, pulling herself out of disarray. She runs to him, pressing nearer to him, seeking his comfort as much as his answers. This is what they have become - she nests herself in his wisdom and he holds her like a holy dove. Now, though, he backs away. Hurt and confused, she tries again, but the Doctor holds her at arm's length.

"Rose." He utters her name as a short warning - and she stops, looking down at herself. She is washed in the bloodied light of the console but more - she is streaked with gold, spilling from her skin, gleaming in her eyes. Fear rises in her throat and she steadies herself against one of the support beams. The gutting strike of the cloister bell jars her and she starts, shuddering in a ripple of amber light.

"Doctor?" She tries again for his consolation, but he is running to the controls, scanning to find out where he landed. She watches his hands flashing over the panels - a choreography she cannot follow, an art in its complexity. He freezes, then slams his fist into the console once - then again, again, and again. She repeats her query, more timid this time. He is furious - no, she has seen him furious. He is terrified.

"I was afraid of this, Rose. I searched the history of your alternate universe as thoroughly as I could - I didn't think it would be a problem, but I couldn't be sure - it's hard to test for something that just isn't there - so I thought, well, what's the worst that can happen, surely the emergency controls won't fail if there's an emergency - because I didn't find anything, not a single word - but that doesn't mean it wouldn't work - not unless -"

"Doctor." Rose repeats his name again, a command this time, sharp and reverberating in the quiet metal room. His gaze jerks to her.

"There are no Time Lords in your universe."

At first, the statement hangs as nonsense in her ears - as though he had just told her that gravity was a purple mouse in charge of putting things back down after they'd been put in the air. Then a weight settles in her stomach with a foul taste, like rotting.

"I tried to check for everything, I really did - I calibrated her to a new energy source - but she feels it the same as I do - there's a homing instinct, we both feel it - and this is just - it's not home, you feel it the same as we do." He pauses for air and to gather his words into a sentence Rose can parse. "She's recalibrating herself. To your old universe."

Rose nods slowly. The old universe. _Her_ old universe. With the old Doctor.

With _her_ old Doctor.


	2. Split All the Heavens Apart

"There was a sound, split all the heavens apart  
On the northern wind, out in a southern spark  
Oh, I will be with you, running from the rain"

Thursday – Running From the Rain

Suddenly the Doctor is hovering over her, sonic screwdriver whirring and flashing in her eyes. She tries to swat him away but is distracted by the shining trails of light spreading from her hands.

"Alright, Doctor, what's this all about?" He continues prodding her with the sonic, trying to elicit some useful information.

"It seems as though the fledgling TARDIS has latched on to the nearest source of trace temporal schism particles and is using that to calibrate herself. She's imprinting herself on you - you've looked into the heart of the old TARDIS, so you're carrying some of that Time Vortex with you still - and she's feeding off of that to teach herself how to fly." Rose is simply staring at the Doctor, who is gesturing and pacing about the console room, eerily highlighted by the warning glow.

"So you're saying that the TARDIS is feeding off traces of whatever the Bad Wolf was, and is going to try and fly using the Time Vortex - which is somehow different in this universe - and... what? Punch a hole in the space-time continuum? Crash land because there's nothing to feed on? What?"

"I don't know, Rose, that's the thing - I haven't exactly dealt with growing and incubating and training a TARDIS in an alternate universe before. That's one subject they clearly lacked at the Academy - interdimensional TARDIS training - because obviously they should have known that in the end I'd kill them all and you and I would end up rearing a TARDIS in the wrong habitat!" He is properly angry, and his face is lit red like some kind of devil as he glares and shouts at her. She flinches, but he feels no regret - only fear, sick and trembling in every muscle of his body. He lost her once, and he only narrowly avoided losing her a second time - would he lose her now to the Time Lord, to the strange alien who cannot die?

Rose sees the trouble in his eyes, sees it in the way his shoulders seem to hunch and press against an invisible burden. Still framed in unearthly light, she moves toward him, reaching her hand to his. His gaze is fixed down, but as she touches his palm with hers he looks at her, and the words she does not say are only comfort, eternal and unmoving. She will stand with him in whatever journey they are making.

_For now_, he thinks.

Suddenly they are jerked by new motion. The Doctor races back to the console, scanning her monitors for information.

"There's... nothing!" he shouts. "We're being tossed about by something else - we're not doing that, the engines are silent!" Rose is holding on again. In some ways, she had missed this - the TARDIS shuddering and thrashing like a carnival ride or a mechanical bull, where just staying on is an act of skill. She preferred it when it was part of an adventure rather than a frightening surprise, but it fills her with a certain thrill all the same.

Abruptly, the rocking stops. The Doctor raises his head up from his bracing position against the console and looks to the door. Rose follows his gaze - there is a dull glow shining in through the two windows set high on her doors.

Neither moves. They stand locked for a moment, watching the light filter in calmly. There is sound from outside the doors and the Doctor realizes the audio filter must have crashed. He listens carefully, cursing his half-human senses, and hears from outside:

"Amelia Pond. Do not move an inch."


End file.
